Saturday, 7 April 2012

I'm now well into the swing of planning our wedding this August and it has surprised me how much trouble I had choosing a colour scheme. My initial feelings were 'country wedding - country colours' - for me this would have been gentle pinks and peaches, glass jars of peonies, raffia placemats and a simple white flowing gown - a dress that was somewhere between grecian and boho. After much rooting around on sites like The Perfect Palette I decided on something along the lines of this gorgeous colour palette featured on love my dress:

Well, I was more or less content with this until I found THE DRESS. It's true what generations of brides have said before; 'you don't find the dress, the dress finds you'. Or at least that was my experience. It became clear on my first trip to a bridal shop (with a gaggle of my best friends for emotional support) that my plans for a modest country frock were not going to happen. What had never occurred to me is that the ladies who work in bridal shops have seen hundreds of brides-to-be walk though the doors and pretty much know what you'll look good in as soon as they clap eyes on you. You see, I'd never imagined myself in lace (prissy), strapless (need ample bosom) and mermaid cut (80's) but that's exactly what I've got - not through any evil plan of the lady at the wedding shop (Pronovias) to make me look yucky - but because it turns out that's exactly what happens to suit me (much to my surprise).

So, back to the colours. Turns out hollywood-diva-glamourpuss-dress would overshadow demure peonies and raffia baskets. Also, odd as this sounds I started to feel the pastels would suit a blonde much better than a brunette. Anyway, THE DRESS just screams out for bold colours, and as we wanted to give a wink to our multi-ethnic backgrounds (6 races between us!) but without having anything so obvious as Bollywood bling or Arabic geometrics - we decided on deep red, orange and a touch of fuscia along the lines of the photos below - both taken from lovely weddings featured on Martha Stewart.

Still, I wasn't quite happy with it. There seemed to be something missing to tie it all together - yes we had the colours but we didn't have a theme. It's not that having a theme is a must, just that a colour palette is just that - a set of coordinating colours that look good together but don't necessarily say much and run the risk of looking too matchy-matchy as you're tempted to get every single accessory, flower, napkin and invite in those colours. So, the other morning I was reviewing (for the 100th time) the stuff I needed to buy before the big day and I came accross manton de manila on my list - one of those beautiful Spanish embroidered shawls that I'd always wanted to invest in and had planned to wear for the evening do. I'm after a white one with red and blue flowers, and it occurred to me that this would actually work really well as a colour palette. As it turns out we had decided to exchange rings in tiny Turkish Izmir ceramic bowls and I realised that these also tend to follow the red, white and blue palette. And with Turkey being a place both David and I had visited and loved it seemed to form the ideal basis for our colour scheme. Bless him, David is being very patient and showing admirable amounts of interest in all these girly dilemmas. So Izmir-meets-flamenco here we come! The whole Izmir thing also gave a gentle nod to our Eastern roots without going all-out ethnic. And not only does it include a strong red that matches up to my dress, it also includes blue which will be really nice to have as the venue (casa rural) looks out over the sea in Galicia and is a bit of a nod to my mum's coastal Bournemouth roots too :-) Everybody wins. The only thing we need to be careful of is the whole red, white and blue thing not looking too much like the French/British/US flag.

Over the past day or so I have been collecting bits of inspiration for this new set of colours and have actually bought the GAL lip balm favours for the ladies so there's no going back now!

(P.s. sorry for not including photo sources, but I had initially collected these for my own private inspiration and now that I've decided to post them I don't have the refereces. In any case if anyone has any rights issues give me a shout!)

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About me

I'm a British-Sudanese girl living in Madrid. I work in marketing and I love interior design, architecture, writing, yoga, good food, travel and beautiful things. This blog is a rough chronicle of the stuff I like, do and think. I also touch upon the subject of happiness from time to time.